Lower Body Lifting

My schedule called for lower body lifting yesterday and this would be another test of my hamstring and its progress.

I deliberately kept the weights low, not wanting to risk re-injuring myself.

I started with front squats, and after my warm-up, I did 115 pounds. That's slightly less than a few weeks ago and it felt pretty good overall.

Next was Romanian deadlifts and I wanted to be very careful with these. Since the injury, I've been bending my knees slightly on this lift, which is not correct. When the legs are straight, the upper hamstrings are stressed a lot, so I've been very careful not to do this. I started at 135 pounds and eventually moved to 185 pounds. But, while I had my legs straighter than in the past few months, I still bent the knee just a little bit to be safe.

Next was trap bar deadlifts, which I did at 225 pounds. And then lumberjack squats. These are done with one end of a barbell in a corner and weight on the other end of the barbell. You hold onto the end of the barbell holding the weight and do squats with that weight. I was doing 3 sets of 15, so I started conservatively with 45 pounds on the 45 pound bar. After one set, I realized that was too easy, so I moved up to 70 pounds, which was just about right.

I finished up with some bodyweight squats where you jump up into a tuck position and then land, heading right back into a squat. These were for time - 3 x 20 seconds.

I think I did a good job of not going too hard. I feel a bit tired, but not sore today. Today, however, I'm just going to do some upper body lifting before I run again tomorrow.

It's nice to be able to do training with my legs again, after a ten day break. But, I still need to be conservative and not risk destroying any healing that is ongoing.